Inside Story: Behind the stereotypes of video games and gamers

Friday

Kimberly Wallace, the features editor of Game Informer, is this week’s guest on "Story in the Public Square," and she changed our perceptions of the industry.

My first introduction to video games was decades ago, when I lived in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and a popular watering hole, the Purple Pub, installed "Pong" — the original version, which was essentially a ball on a screen that two players controlled with a paddle. I played more advanced games as the years went on, but ceded interest to my son when he was a child.

Calvin’s 25 now and remains an avid gamer, but save for the occasional updates he gives me of the latest and hottest games, I remained largely uninformed of the state-of-the-art.

Kimberly Wallace, @KStar1785, this week’s guest on "Story in the Public Square," changed that.

Wallace is the features editor of Game Informer, a monthly magazine devoted to video gaming that has a circulation of almost 8 million — in print. That astonishing figure alone tells you all you need to know of the field that has its roots in an era of paddle-controlled balls.

Co-host Jim Ludes, who is a gamer, started the conversation with two other figures, also astonishing.

“We were talking about this before we rolled, that 'Avatar,' the highest-grossing movie of all time, grossed $2.8 billion," he said. "'Space Invaders,' the highest-grossing video game of all time, did $13.9 billion.”

“Yeah, crazy,” said Wallace.

“With that kind of money, do we take video games seriously enough?” Ludes said.

“I've seen it go both ways,” Wallace said. “You get the ‘lazy gamer’ stereotype that goes on, but I think video games have grown so much. I was talking to one of the developers, Ken Levine, who created 'BioShock,' which is a phenomenal game, if you haven't checked it out. He was talking about how it was like film. Like film, everything had to be invented, and he felt that's what was going on with video games starting with 'Pong.'”

More numbers: "BioShock" in its many versions has sold tens of millions of copies.

As gaming has evolved, Wallace said, story has become paramount.

Starting with the appeal of fun, Wallace said, “now we have games with full-blown storytelling, themes, fully-realized characters… There's also the social side of them, too, where games bring these communities together, people together every night to just sit on there and play some games and get to know each other.” This, via the internet, something that also did not exist commercially back in those Purple Pub days.

Creation and production of a top contemporary game, Wallace said, involves an enormous investment of time, talent and money — more than for many Hollywood movies.

“To tell a story through a video game is much more difficult,” she said, “because you have to constantly engage the player. There’s always a battle between giving the player something interesting to do, versus being able to tell the story you want to tell.”

Ludes asked: “Do you have a sense of who's actually playing games? The stereotype, I think, is sort of a prepubescent teenage boy, but what's the truth?”

“They also find that it skews actually a little older than you would expect, even though all these young kids are getting into it, too,” Wallace said.

“The numbers that I looked up said that the average female gamer is 36,” Ludes said.

“You wouldn't think that, right?” Wallace said.

“And the average male gamer is 32,” said Ludes.

“And that is totally not the stereotype,” I said.

“If you go into one of these games that you have to coordinate as a team, and you listen to your teammates, you can tell you have people of all different ages,” Wallace said. “You'll be like, ‘that's totally a kid there, but yeah, they're great,’ or ‘okay, that guy sounds like he's a bit older, and has done this for a while.’ ”

If you’ll pardon the pun, few people are as informed about gaming as Wallace. Her knowledge and good humor make for an exceptional edition of “Story” this week, whether you game or not.

“Story in the Public Square” airs on Rhode Island PBS in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts on Sundays at 11 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.; the coast-to-coast broadcast schedule is at http://bit.ly/2ShlY5E An audio version airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., Sundays at 4:30 a.m. and 11:30 p.m. on SiriusXM’s P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), Channel 124.

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